Monthly Archives: January 2012

To me, this is where we will start to see real change. I have mentioned before, that of the two major incidents that our family has had to deal with at our high school, one with each kid, *both* resulted in an arrest of the perpetrator, a trial, a guilty sentence and a penalty imposed.

And in both cases, the perpetrator changed their attitude. Changed the way they behaved.

Consequences matter. Consequences make a kid change, and they make a bully’s family understand the severity of the situation. Nothing like a lawsuit to bring it home for ya.

In what could be a precedent-setting case, the parents of a 14-year-old girl have filed a civil suit over alleged classroom bullying. They are seeking $215,000 in damages from another teenager.

It’s interesting to look at how other provinces are dealing with the evolution of school boards. On a fundamental level, it’s of note that New Brunswick has a Minister of Education and Early Childhood Development; this seems a little more focused than our own Minister of Education, Sports & Leisure.

Elementary- and middle-school teachers who help raise their students’ standardized-test scores seem to have a wide-ranging, lasting positive effect on those students’ lives beyond academics, including lower teenage-pregnancy rates and greater college matriculation and adult earnings, according to a new study that tracked 2.5 million students over 20 years.

It’s a good read and it points yet again to the real value of recruiting, training and retaining the very best we can find.

It’s been four years since I campaigned and won a seat on our council of commissioners, with bullying being one of my top stated priorities.

With my own children in the school board, I knew that bullying was something that went on every day in our schools. It’s of interest that when I first drove focus to the issue at council, one of our commissioners actually questioned if bullying really was a problem in our schools, because he didn’t think it was. Wow – it has been and continues to be a long road indeed.

So what is the problem? Do we need better rules? Codes of conduct? Better policy?

If you read our existing codes of conduct, you would say no. The expectations are very clear and in fact, were these codes of conduct to be enforced to the letter, we would at least minimize and at best eradicate the bulk of all bullying in our schools.

So – we don’t need to worry about rules, or codes of conduct.

Do we need better policy? When I first recognized the depth of the detachment from reality that some of our politicians suffered from, I decided to work on a framework, or a definition of what our expectations were as a school board as regards respect and responsibility. It took more than a year, but that framework finally became policy. It is posted in every school lobby in our board. And it too looks good on paper.

So we have codes of conduct. We have policy. And yet, virtually every school day I hear of dirty, disgusting and entirely abusive acts witnessed at our schools.

So what to do? I have tried to get standardized reporting of bullying incidents in our schools. We have in fact begun to survey our student population and the first board wide results should be examined by commissioners shortly.

But in the mean time, we actually have kids killing themselves because they see no way out.

So we’re obviously not doing enough. And it’s not moving near fast enough.

If we want to take this bull by the horns, the first step we need to take is real enforcement of the rules that we have in place. We say bullying in any form will not be tolerated. So – why are we tolerating it?

For some reason, school boards seem to feel that they are wholly responsible for educating every single student in our system. Regardless of their behaviour. Personally, I believe that if a student cannot bring himself to behave and where we have exhausted all of our means to socialize that student? Sorry, then he goes to the next level – provincial social services, outside of our schools and perhaps offered online schooling.

But to leave that student in amongst the rest of our population and allow him the continued opportunity to abuse them and distract them from their own education? Where is the sense in that? The education act requires us to provide an education for all students. It does not specify the format of that education nor does it require us to keep the wolves in the sheep pen.

Bullying is a societal problem, and school boards cannot handle it alone. There are many cases where social services should take over. The bully should be removed from the school and his issues dealt with by social services. The attempted education of the bully cannot be allowed to supersede the education of the rest of our students, let alone to take priority over the real life safety of our kids.

Until we accept these facts, we won’t succeed in dealing with the problem.